


Champion and Pariah

by Senatsu



Category: Pumpkin Jack
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, who doesn't love a fabulously tense rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27247156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senatsu/pseuds/Senatsu
Summary: The Wizard was a man who’d become something from nothing.He’d scraped and fought and clawed his way into purpose, into meaning, into glory. He’d made them all need him, they who’d once laughed at his nothingness, at his reaching for something greater than the existence he was given.They needed a Champion against the powers and the dark, and they looked to him.What he had not anticipated was the efficacy of a pumpkin.
Relationships: Jack (Pumpkin Jack)/The Wizard (Pumpkin Jack)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Champion and Pariah

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I have to embarrass myself by being the first one here.

The Wizard was a man who’d become something from nothing. 

He’d scraped and fought and clawed his way into purpose, into meaning, into _glory_. He’d made them all need him, they who’d once laughed at his nothingness, at his reaching for something greater than the existence he was given. 

They needed a Champion against the powers and the dark, and they looked to him. 

Of course, fighting your way to the top often comes at the price of the person you had been; it was harder, now, to recognize himself in the twisted form he saw in the mirror. But given the chance to do it all over, he would pay the same price again in a heartbeat, for now none could cow him… not even the Devil. And _certainly_ none of the pitiful, brainless constructs the Devil calls monsters. 

The Wizard felt a hard-won pride building in every bone in his body. His time had come: he would prove to the world his place at the pinnacle such that it would become _legendary_. He would hunt down the Amulet of old, make it his own, and defeat the evil powers that had ruined the world. 

What he had not anticipated was the efficacy of a pumpkin. 

Or rather, a soul-filled pumpkin attached to a body. 

Or rather, a soul-filled pumpkin attached to a body most of the time but other times unattached and freely crawling about on--

_...whatever._

Regardless, Jack - Jack, the Devil’s Pariah - had not ever once entered into his calculations initially; the Wizard had thought for certain that some combination of the Devil’s own beasts would be the death of a gourd walking around on nothing more than a magical pile of sticks and fibers. But then Jack had not only survived - he’d done it again, and again, and _again_. Somehow, impossibly, he’d even attained allies along the way: an owl to guide him, a crow to be his wings and an aid with enemies firing from afar, even a talking sword, for Hell’s sake! 

The Wizard couldn’t deny he was fascinated. 

Though Jack was certainly nothing resembling a human now, the fact remained that he had been born human, and that it was his human soul that had been infused into the pumpkin’s flesh, lighting it from within. He was, though changed, still just as human as the Wizard was himself. They were simply on opposite sides of a mutual interest, that was all. And Jack… reminded the Wizard of himself, from the way Jack seemed callous against all but himself, complaining endlessly and threatening others into submission, to the way that he conquered the odds set against him time and again, in both power and cleverness alike.

Despite himself, the Wizard couldn’t help but want to study such a creature. 

He watched via magical means, gleaning from each new victory on the part of the pumpkin man just where his strengths and weaknesses lay. The reason he gave to himself was that such knowledge would make it all too easy to defeat Jack when, as seemed to be growing ever more inevitable, he would one day appear on the Wizard’s doorstep. But in truth… he studied Jack simply because he could not help but to do so. He studied Jack because he _enjoye_ d studying Jack. 

And perhaps Jack felt something similar, however twisted the emotion might have been - “You’re a crazy, sadistic maniac! When I was alive, you might’ve been my best friend,” Jack had said with something like a toxic mixture of disgust, admiration, and affection. The Wizard suspected it was the highest compliment he could have been paid. 

“And you, my best test subject,” the Wizard had replied with his own usual tactics of deflection. At the very least, it was honest in that it spoke volumes of his _fascination_ with Jack. There was something to be said for having a rival, it seemed… something tantalizing between you that pushed you to want to kill each other as much as you wanted to keep meeting, keep fighting, again and again and again - the desperate burning desire for an irrefutable and final victory over the other that never quite outmatched the desire for the fighting to go on into eternity, in fear of what life would be like if you ever truly _won_. If you won in a way so final that there was no way back… 

Wouldn’t you be left hollow, empty, in its wake? 

The Wizard didn’t truly wish to know. 

Perhaps it was this complex emotion that lead him to threatening Jack in as personal a way he could manage - via a very physical variation on a projected image, there but not there - when Jack made it finally to the frigid but cheery Northern territory where the Wizard was frantically studying the Amulet he had taken with him what seemed like forever ago now. 

* * *

_“Go back where you came from, Jack,”_ the Wizard said now, flinging a spray of bolts that destroyed the earth where Jack had been standing only moments prior - until he’d leapt free of the place the bolts would land, of course. 

“Go stuff yourself,” Jack suggested in return, ever the charmer. 

The Wizard knew where this was going to end, saw it in his mind’s eye: the place of his study, where Jack would finally set foot. The ferocious battle that would lay waste to the entire arena (he’d seen the results of Jack’s previous battles, after all.) The smoking remains that would be left in the aftermath… Jack’s remains, of course! The Wizard could not possibly lose. 

The thought of those smoking remains made the Wizard’s skin prickle with discomfort in a way that it had not in a long, long time… even buried as it was beneath the piles of his robes and scarf and hat and gloves and all else that concealed him from the world that once scorned him. 

In one second the Wizard was hovering at the edge of the cliff behind him; in the next he had pinned Jack to the nearest tree with several sharp magical darts and a staff across his wooden neck. Jack certainly wasn’t going to feel a pinch in his throat or feel his air supply dwindling in the way that a human body would… but at the least, it left a strong impression and image just the same, which was all the Wizard was going for. 

“Leave _now_ ,” the Wizard hissed, “lest I rend you to shreds in my own domain. You’re no match for me, Jack! Heed my words and return the way you have come.” 

Jack placed a straw-filled glove on the Wizard’s arm and squeezed with a strength far surpassing that of any human man; the Wizard winced, but his face was deeply shadowed enough that it did not show. “The way you say that, I’d almost think you didn’t _want_ to ‘rend me to shreds,’” Jack drawled, and his grip tightened so deeply that the Wizard felt his own bones creak beneath his mortal flesh. Projection though his body might have been just there, it still transferred its sensations to his physical form where he remained hidden. 

“Not everyone takes as great a pleasure in destruction as you do, Jack,” the Wizard replied noncommittally. 

“And yet you’re the jackass that admitted to leaving his own servant behind to get destroyed by the great me _just_ so you could see how I’d do it,” Jack said then. He began to twist the Wizard’s arm away from his neck. 

“Just because I am willing to break an egg or eighty to make an omelette,” the Wizard said, pinning the staff across Jack’s neck with magic now and leaving him trapped against the tree and pulling free of range to save his bruised arm, “does not imply that I enjoy the cracking.” 

“No, but the way you talked about watching me fight sure ratted you out,” said the pumpkin, the wicked silhouette of his glowing eyes growing even more sharp around the edges for a moment, his carved grin more pronounced. “Face it, you big bag of pixie dust, you’re _gettin’ off_ to this.” 

The Wizard’s voice was cool. “Are you certain you’re not one of the Devil’s own monsters? You’re certainly crude enough.” 

“You dodge the subject just as easy as you dodge the fighting, I see,” said Jack, his hands working at the magic pins that held the staff against his neck. 

Nearby, the crow fluttered and squawked anxiously. 

The Wizard ignored it. “I have better things to do than help you satisfy your lust for battle, Jack.”

Jack stared at him for a long moment, then, and the Wizard got the unnerving sense that there was something very calculating in that glowing, sharp-cut expression. “I don’t think you do,” Jack said when that moment ended. 

The Wizard said nothing. 

“I think you’ve got your priorities mixed up as bad as one of your stupid, stinking potions,” Jack continued. He flung the staff off with a sudden _crack_ as the magical darts ripped free of the tree bark. He let it fall to the ground and stalked forward towards the Wizard’s projected self. 

The Wizard hovered back the span of a single pace despite himself. 

“I think you’d rather be _fighting me_ than anything else in this whole Damned world, and you’re in denial.” By now, Jack was close enough to grasp the projection by the front of his robe and _lift_ , and for some reason… the Wizard did not end the projection or teleport away, though he could have. “You’re smothering yourself in some idiotic ideal of… duty or glory - I don’t know what you closeted four-eyes types think or want, and I’d like to keep it that way - and studying that stupid magic rock of yours instead of meeting me man to man so I can take you the hell out.”

The Wizard felt a different kind of prickle on his skin. It thrilled him. 

The thrill startled him so badly that now he did indeed teleport out of Jack’s grasp to hover three feet away and to the side of where he’d been. “No more have I any desire to stoop to or understand your infinitely self-serving nature than you do to understand me,” said the Wizard then, no sign of his wavering emotions in that arrogant tone. “As a Champion of humanity, and the good of the earth, I am simply warning you in good faith of the inevitable demise you will face at my hands should you choose to enter my domain. As I said, I take no pleasure in death.” 

“And I know your dishonest, shriveled little scholar’s brain knows better than to think I’m gonna stop just ‘cause you said you’d kill me if I came,” Jack said then. The crow alighted on his shoulder, and Jack turned to look at it for a moment, snorting, then back to the Wizard. “Bring it, Wiz. I _know you want to_.” 

The Wizard again said nothing. This time, however, he vanished from view altogether. 

* * *

He stood panting in the corner of his magically-lit cavern, recovering from the efforts of projecting himself for longer than he ever had before; even so, the sweat on his shadowed brow was not entirely from exertion. 

Jack was coming here. 

Jack was coming _here_. 

At last, at long last, they would stand together in the flesh. 

Their forces would clash with no pathetic _intermediary_ to do the fighting in place of the Wizard, when the Wizard could do _so much better than they ever could._

When it came to Jack, there was no one alive but the Wizard who could deliver a proper challenge--

The Wizard’s thoughts screeched to a halt. 

_Just why should such a thing matter to him?_

He shook himself of the frivolous notion like a flea and set to preparing for the arrival for a man with a flaming pumpkin for a head. They would fight, and the Wizard would destroy Jack, and he would unlock the secrets of the Amulet… and that would be that. 

That… would be that. 

He stared at the Amulet he now held in his hand, unable to will himself to move. 

* * *

All too quickly, yet not nearly soon enough, Jack stood on the Wizard’s cavern floor, just as he’d said he would. 

And the Wizard set out to destroy him, just as he’d said he would. 

Yet even as he half-destroyed his own cavern floor and walls and ceiling alike with the magical equivalent of one nuclear bomb after another, something in him quailed at the fight. Something in him balked at the idea of rendering Jack’s form a pile of nothing more than cinders, with no soul left inside. Despite dealing significant damage to the sticks-for-bones shell that Jack wore, the Wizard knew that more of his magic missiles were missing their mark than should have been. Yet still he raged, shouting his superiority and Jack’s worthlessness into the tumultuous air around them, telling Jack how he’d raised himself from nothing, how he was the Champion of the humans, their righteous savior, and good always won--

\--but then, if the Wizard was so good, so pure, why was the Amulet’s power not his by now? 

Before he would ever know the answer to the question, it was the Wizard’s own body that suddenly lay on the floor in tatters, singed and smoking, his breath fading fast. 

“Curse you Jack,” he said then, his lungs burning like hellfire with the effort. “Curse you and the feeble world you’ll inhabit.” 

“That’s the idea,” Jack said back to him. His pumpkin lantern grin seemed… less grin-like than it usually did, somehow. He didn’t look like a man who’d just won his final battle. 

But the Wizard could say no more, for he’d finally breathed his last, and the eyes that glowed beneath his hat’s brim with all the magic, all the knowledge he’d fought for, closed for the final time. 

* * *

The Wizard woke. Not to some incorporeal form and a godly voice welcoming him to the afterlife, as he’d expected, but to a foul and arrogant and crass demon of a man bent over him with yellow lantern eyes and a jagged knife-cut mouth. 

“Huh, didn’t think that’d actually work,” said Jack, aglow with the almighty powers of the Amulet he had pried from the Wizard’s grasp in death. 

“I--you--” said the Wizard, sputtering for the very first time in what must have been half a century. “...but _why_?” 

Jack tossed the Amulet up and down in his hand, up and down, up and down - and then slung the chain of it around his neck. “The deal I made was that I’d _kill_ you,” he said then. “No one said anything about what I did with you afterwards.” 

The Wizard gawked at him. He ached all over, as if something had steamrolled over him a hundred times at least. That was Jack for you, all right. His skin, however, began to prickle again with that same thrill as before. “The way you say that, I’d almost think you hadn’t _wanted_ to kill me,” the Wizard said when at last he found his voice again, mocking Jack’s words of earlier. 

“Of course I wanted to kill you,” said Jack, “but that’s not the same as wanting you dead.” 

In a way it didn’t make sense, and in a way, it made more sense than anything the Wizard had ever learned in his life. “I see,” he said, for at last, perhaps, he did. He rolled weakly onto one side and pushed himself half up onto an elbow that threatened to buckle under him at any moment. Apparently having a duel to the death and actually dying was harder to recover from than the usual wears of daily life. Oddly enough. He was surprised when a straw-filled glove suddenly attached itself to the crease of his armpit and hoisted him upright with all the grace of a farmer shoveling manure. His head snapped sharply to the side to stare at Jack. 

“Well I don’t have _all day_ to sit around and wait for your weak ass to figure out how standing works again,” said Jack, holding the Wizard still to make sure he stayed upright. “We’ve got places to be, buildings to burn… experiments to do…”

The Wizard felt his shriveled little remains of a heart do something dangerously like a dance in his dead-but-alive-again chest. “We?” he said. Then, with an unfortunate flicker of shock delight in his voice, “Experiments?” 

“Unless you’ve got somethin’ better to do again,” Jack said. His voice sounded like the kind of eyeroll he could no longer make with his actual eyes. 

The Wizard looked around at the destroyed cavern, at the Amulet in Jack’s hand, at Jack himself. 

He thought of humanity, who hadn’t had a moment’s kindness or interest to spare him until the moment he could produce something they wanted. 

“No,” he said at last, and he allowed himself to lean on Jack for the slightest bit of support. “No, I don’t think I do.” 

And Jack, the Devil’s Pariah, grinned, the widest of his pumpkin grins, and kept hold of the Wizard as with his newest powers he lifted from the floor to fly like a crow into the sky beyond, where the world - all the world, and all the wicked delights to be taken from it - awaited them both. 


End file.
